In 2000, having completed a Masters Degree in Latin American Politics and a period of fieldwork in El Salvador for a dissertation looking at on women and the Catholic Church, I was awarded a John Brookes Travel Bursary to investigate religious festivals dedicated to the Virgin Mary in Mexico and Central America. That trip produced two articles:

La Purisíma Published in The Tablet in 2002 , this article explored the religious and cultural significance of the festival of the Immaculate Conception to the Nicaraguans.

Mario, like the majority of Nicaraguans, was born and baptised Catholic but is now non-practising and, like many of his compatriots, left Nicaragua in 1978, when the civil war was at its height. He had been living in the United States ever since and this was his first visit home in twenty-three years. Too young to recall the years during which he grew up in Leon, he had no recollection of the celebrations that mark Nicaragua’s most popular religious festival, Maria La Purisíma, Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception. Like me, Mario was both emotionally and spiritually overwhelmed by the manner in which Nicaraguans expressed their devotion to the Virgin Mary, not only the intensity and fervour of the festivities themselves, but their ability to bring together a nation so divided by violence, poverty and religious belief. The pre-eminence of the Virgin in popular Latin-Church is a great enigma. How to reconcile with an endemic of domestic violence and sexual abuse? Post Vatican II attempts to rationalise Marian devotion and place it within a more christocentric context do not appear to have made much impact here in Nicaragua. Despite the increasing commercialisation of Christmas and a calendar already jam-packed with religious holidays, the Feast of the Virgin of the Immaculate conception, known as La Purísima, continues to elicit intense devotion.

Cuerpo Libre o MuertePublished in Diva magazine in May 2002, this article looked at the numerous problems faced by lesbians in Central America.

At first sight there seemed nothing particularly unusual about Aura Rosa Pavón, a 26-year-old single woman living in the small Nicaraguan town of Niquinohomo. Like most of her neighbours she eked out a meagre existence from rearing pigs and chickens to sell at the local market. Unlike her neighbours, however, Aura transgressed the accepted norms of Latin American society for Aura Rosa was gay. Worse than that, she had the temerity to be quite open about it. From her youth Aura Rosa suffered continued harassment and abuse from many of her neighbours in the barrio because she refused to make any attempt to hide her sexuality. Occasionally this disapproval manifested itself in violence; like the night an irate neighbour attempted to run her over with his lorry just because she was gay. For the remainder of her tragically short life Aura Rosa was troubled by a constant pain in her left leg. Aura Rosa was in a stable and loving relationship with Karla, another young woman from Niquinohomo, much to the chagrin of Melba Rosa, Karla’s mother, who tried time and time again to separate them and marry her daughter off to Daniel, a local coffee grower. Melba accused Aura Rosa of kidnapping her daughter and demanded her arrest under Article 204 of the Nicaraguan Penal Law which mandates prison sentences of up to three years for ‘anyone who induces, promotes, propagandises or practices sexual intercourse between persons of the same sex’. So Aura Rosa was jailed and, to add insult to injury, deliberately placed in a cell full of male inmates who treated her with loathing and contempt, though it seems she was spared physical or sexual abuse. Thanks, however, to the efforts of the Comisión Pro Derechos de Lesbianas y Homosexuales, in association with the Nicaraguan Centre for Human Rights, Aura Rosa was eventually released.

Shot from both Sides: Theology and the Woman who isn’t quite what she seemsPublished inTrans/Formations: A Radical Theological Critique on Transgendered Questions Contiunuum, (2009) (http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=2O-6kx7ZRCoC) . A contributing chapter on religion and gender from a personal perspectiveLove the sinner, hate the sin.How many times have those of us lurking on the periphery of orthodox theologies heard that apparently innocuous little cliché being aimed in our general direction? Sounds reasonable enough, in the greater scheme of things, at least; love the sinner, hate the sin seems to encapsulate the concepts of forgiveness and redemption that form the tenets of Christ’s teaching and eradicates, within one simple sentence, the more odious, misogynist and blatantly barmy decrees laid out in the Old Testament. It makes perfect sense, in theory at least, and can even lead us to a greater understanding of the nature of sin and how and why people commit crimes and injustices that might seem, on the surface at least, so inherently and incomprehensively wrong, if not downright evil. Those Catholics of a certain vintage (myself included) might even call upon it when analysing the nature of structural and personal sin that was central to the debates surrounding liberation theology in the sixties and seventies. Thus, when my rucksack gets slashed in the market in downtown San Salvador I don’t blame the kid who did it, rather the socio-political systems that force him to engage in such acts. That’s all very well when it’s nothing more valuable than ten dollars and a cheap camera that gets nicked. When it’s your passport, traveller’s cheques and all your worldly goods, trite, liberal platitudes can wear a bit thin. At some point down the line, love the sinner, hate the sin descends into a debate about moral relativism. Back in the comfort of my safe European home, I can probably bring myself to forgive – assuming that’s what the love in love the sinner essentially means – the ten year-old Salvadoran urchin who stole my backpack and even hope he’s invested his proceeds well. What’s not so easy is to bring oneself to love those who carry out abominable acts against ourselves and those we are immensely fond of. I speak from experience, not of having my backpack spirited away but having been on the receiving end of a sin – a crime – so repulsive and life-changing that I could never, ever bring myself to forgive. Love the sinner, hate the sin. There is, of course, no sliding scale; if you forgive the pilfering child you have to forgive the calculating rapist. But where does that leave the likes of me? What if our ‘sin’ is not one of theft or violation but of daring to be different; a sin not of ‘doing’ but simply of ‘being’. That’s when Love the sinner, hate the sin ceases to be a Christian mantra and becomes, instead, a diktat of theological orthodoxy, a stick with which to beat those who refuse to tow the line. Love the sinner, hate the sin; sounds like an exercise in Christian toleration when it is, of course, anything but.